Sackler Galleries, Royal Academy of Arts, Piccadilly,
London, until 14 July 2002

In 1996, while levelling the sports field of the Shefan
primary school in Qingzhou, Shefan Province, China, workers discovered
a shallow pit, filled with broken Buddhist sculptures. Although
covering an area of 60 square metres, the pit was only two metres
deep, suggesting that a protective temple or pagoda had once stood
above it. The pit had been carefully constructed and the sculptures
buried with care and ritual ceremony  not simply discarded.

The sculptures had not always been so carefully tended. All were
broken in some way: many had been violently smashed, others showed
traces of burning; some had only minor damage, been repaired, but
broken again before burial. It is likely that some suffered during
natural catastrophes (earthquakes; fire) and others were casualties
of the intermittent persecution of Buddhism over the 700 years before
they were interred. Fortunately, most figures had intact faces.

Of the 400 individual sculptures, 35 of the best preserved and
most exquisite are on display in London as part of their first European
tour. The sculptures come from a crucial time in Chinese Buddhist
history, and Shefan lay at the end of the Silk Road so was open
to a host of cultural influences from as far west as the Mediterranean.
Hoards of other Buddhist objects (including over 1,000 sculptures)
have been discovered in cave complexes and in reliquary chambers
beneath pagodas in China, particularly in and around Qingzhou, but
this find is probably the most important.

Also found in the pit were coins, porcelain, earthenware, lacquered
wood and cast iron fragments that suggest the pit was filled some
time between 1200-1250 AD. The sculptures, however, are considerably
older, dating from a short span of less than 50 years: 529577
AD. Most were carved from a fine-grained limestone, permitting crisp
detailing, and it is remarkable how much of the original paint and
gilding has survived the burial  providing a glimpse of how
they must have appeared originally, faintly lit, within the recesses
of a dark temple.

The size and decoration of the sculptures depended on the resources
of those who commissioned them as acts of worship. The first exhibit
is the smallest (less than two feet high), and earliest (529 AD),
it bears a touching inscription from the donor  a widow who
dedicated the offering to her late husband, two dead children and
her only surviving child. It takes the form of a triad, a Buddha
flanked on either side by a bodhisattva against a mandorla (a decorated,
almond-shaped background). The Buddha has achieved nirvana, enlightenment;
he is depicted with idealised features and a solemn yet serene expression.
Bodhisattvas have delayed their own enlightenment in order to assist
others on their own paths to nirvana. They are smaller than the
Buddha, with more realistic faces and richly decorated robes. This
triad is typical of the Northern Wei dynasty, during which sculptors
shed some of Buddhisms Indian influences and adopted more
traditional Chinese elements: the Buddha has large, open eyes, a
smile, and tiered, decorative robes that hide the shape of the body.

The largest exhibit is also a triad, some 10 feet high, five feet
wide and weighing over a ton. Stylistically, however, it appears
to be from a later period, when China was ruled by the Northern
Qi dynasty whose aristocracy were nomadic, militaristic and hostile
to indigenous Chinese culture. They favoured art styles from far
afield  India, Afghanistan, Persia  areas influenced
by the Greeks since the conquering armies of Alexander the Great
in the 320s BC (whose name still echoes in Kandahar,
the ancient capital of Afghanistan).

Along with such triads there are two other main groups of sculpture:
Buddhas standing alone, and bodhisattvas standing alone.

The solitary bodhisattvas of the Northern Qi period (after 550
AD) gave sculptors greater scope for stylistic experimentation.
The most spectacular example in this exhibition is life-sized and
as naturalistic as possible within the constraints of the form.
The oval, full-mouthed face is austere yet compassionate and his
richly decorated robes appear as crisp and fine as the day they
were carved  with strings of pearls, tightly woven silk ropes,
embroidered panels, and illustrations of fantastic creatures derived
from Hindu mythology.

Another bodhisattva sits on an hourglass throne, with his left
foot resting on a column growing from a dragons mouth. The
face is gilded and framed by black hair; he wears a diadem still
richly red, green and gold, colours that also remain on his pleated
robes.

Buddhas of the Northern Qi are shown in slight motion with thin,
plain garments that cling to the outlines of the body in a more
naturalistic style. Two headless torsos of the Buddha from the Northern
Qi period are strikingly similar in style to a red quartzite torso
of Nefertiti in the Louvre  one of the great sculptures extant
from Egypts brief flirtation with monotheism. Although the
art and practices of the heretical Armana dynasty were later suppressed
in Egypt, a more naturalistic styling in painting and sculpture
persisted throughout the following New Kingdom dynasties and on
into the time when Alexander became the first Greek pharaoh. It
is purely this authors speculation that a style originating
in the Nile Valley in 1358 BC may have penetrated as far as the
Pacific shore of China 1,800 years later.

Egyptian statuary is underappreciated, by some, for
being impersonal, rigid and stiff,
especially compared to later Greek sculpture with its exuberance,
fluidity and depiction of motion. These Buddhas could be criticised
on the same basis; but for me, the restraint and formalism of these
sculptures (in common with Egyptian art) actually serve to emphasise
the emotion and character of both subject and artist. The effect
is to illustrate both the transitory and the transcendent. The serenity
and bliss promised by identification with the Buddha could not be
better served and illuminated than by these works.